Excitel Cable Cutter Plans with IPTV option

@Himanshu42 could you share some pictures the Excitel modem/router/ONT?
 
All these things are too technical for me but I'm amazed that Excitel/PlayBoxTV has really invested in such a big infrastructure to provide the IPTV service
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Technically proper IPTV requires much less bandwidth and CPU power atleast on the broadcasting end since it's basically just sending the same packet to any listening device. Other App based TV streaming providers actually incur much larger cost due to the infrastructure needed to basically host catch-up and LiveTV and serve them in realtime to customers on any network.

So is their IPTV true in sense, separate VLAN and dedicated LAN port that connects to a IPTV box?
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In this case they don't seem to be supplying a IPTV box (maybe I'm wrong on this.) Since they're serving this as a option inside their App it's highly likely that the streams are just on a multicast IP and probably not encrypted. If they're encrypted It could be using something like widewine. Traditional IPTV boxes though are known to use other types of encryption tied to their hardware which doesn't seem to be the case of this.

So far, its partially working, but I'm still not convinced with their service and support. The STAR channels are still missing from the IPTV and nobody knows the reason or providing me any estimated time on when it will be fixed.
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If a entire bouquet of channels disappear it's likely to be issue with licensing either excitel themselves or their upstream broadcasting partner were probably not able to reach an agreement for IPTV broadcasting of their channels. Especially since Disney would be eyeing for more Hotstar subscribers they likely might have set the price and terms for licensing very favorable to themselves vs what IPTV provider would be getting out of it.
 
IPTV operators are in the same category as DPOs (distribution platform operators) like DTH and LCO/MSOs according to TRAI. The rules of agreement between DPO and broadcasters are clearly laid out by TRAI, to avoid any disputes as much as possible. So it's surprising these issues still pop-up.
 
It's time to bring this thread alive :)

I have recently renewed the Excitel IPTV plan and surprisingly Excitel has completely ditched PlayBoxTV now, Thank god, they were so bad with literally everything. The renewed subscription has come up with All the OTT app subscriptions through the OTT Play app, and they have provided me access to the ULKA TV app for IPTV.

I can say ULKA TV provides IPTV in a real way, Yes, all the channels exist in this and the rates are according to TRAI.
I haven't seen any downtime in ULKA so far, yes there was an error sometimes with the message "SOURCE ERROR", but it got fixed automatically in a couple of seconds.

Channels Quality - For the HD channels, 1080p constant, no doubt! and for non-HD channels, I have no idea.

Here are some screenshots from the ULKA TV App.

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For free, along with your excitel plan, you'll get access to Star Plus HD, Colors HD, SET HD, ZEE TV HD, Discovery HD, Star Sports 1 HD (English), and many more channels. I'm paying 88 rs per month more for some additional channels I have subscribed like Star Sports 1 Hindi HD, AND TV HD, Star Gold HD, Star Gold 2 HD, Star Gold Select HD, Star Gold Romance & Hungama.

It's been a month now and I have no complaints from ULKA TV so far. Excitel works fine at my location as well but it varies from LCO to LCO.

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